WSLC Reports Today -- May 15, 2009

May 15, 2009

May 14: Entertainers plug EFCA (video)

May 13: Sen. Murray battles for U.S. jobs

12: Health reform opponent is outed

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Friday, May 15, 2009

Health care talks center on public plan option

The most explosive issue in the negotiations for sweeping reform of the U.S. health care system is whether to create a public government-run health plan to compete with private health plans. Every American would have the option of purchasing coverage through this plan, which would not need to generate profits and would almost certainly have lower administrative costs. A public plan also would introduce price competition to the private insurance market. Private plans have collectively done a horrible job at seeking efficiencies to restrain premium increases. They have done a terrific job of simply passing on rising medical costs to plan participants. Read more.

► In today's NY Times -- Health care leaders say Obama overstated their promise to control costs -- Hospitals and insurance companies now say that President Obama substantially overstated their promise made earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.

► In today's Seattle Times -- Health care status quo pushing out single-payer advocates (Amy Goodman column) -- As health-care reform is debated in the nation's capital, advocates of a single-payer system are excluded from the Senate Finance Committee hearings. Instead, industry bigwigs interested in preserving the current failing system are taking the lead.

Employee Free Choice Act news:

► In today's Brunswick (ME) Times-Record -- Levelling the playing field (editorial) -- EFCA's bottom-line goals are direct and simple: (1) Restore the principles of fairness, timeliness and accountability to the process laid out in the National Labor Relations Act more than 70 years ago.
(2) Empower working Americans to have a greater voice in achieving fair wages, safe workplaces and benefits that will encourage loyalty and a vested desire to help their employers be profitable and thrive.

► At AFL-CIO Now -- Big business likes arbitration -- if it can control the process -- An issue paper from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform states: “Virtually any type of dispute between private individuals or entities can be addressed by arbitration, including, for example, contract, real estate, employment and tort disputes.” The Chamber knows arbitration works for business -- and it doesn’t want the same for America’s workers.

► In today's Harrisburg (PA) P-N -- Sen. Specter praises revised union bill -- The newest Democratic member of the U.S. Senate says that prospects are good for a compromise this year on a major labor law that will allow unions to organize more easily.

Boeing news:

► In today's Everett Herald -- Governor creates aerospace council to keep Boeing in state -- The governor: "This is not about losing Boeing. It is about whether the (possible) second (787) line will be located in Washington state. I have no intention of losing it. We're fighters and we're going to fight for it."

► At TheNewsTribune.com -- Governor's order creates "Dept. of Boeing" -- I'm sure the business community would have preferred that she sign an order forbidding the Machinists or any other Boeing or aerospace union to strike ever, ever, ever again, and denying unemployment benefits for anyone ever laid off by Boeing. But that would have been overstepping her bounds by a tad.

► From Bloomberg -- Boeing contract "messed up," Gates says -- The Defense Secretary says Boeing's contract to develop the Army's most expensive weapons system is "messed up" because it fails to provide enough incentive to encourage exceptional performance.

► In today's LA Times -- Boeing C-17 poised to survive political turbulence -- Lawmakers are unlikely to heed President Obama's wishes to cut funding for the military aircraft program for one key reason: the deal sustains jobs in 43 states.

Legislative session redux:

► In today's Daily World -- Pontoons are on the way -- Gregoire promised last year that she would bring hundreds of “family-wage jobs” to Grays Harbor. On Wednesday, at a bill-signing ceremony on the campus of Grays Harbor College, she made it happen. The state will spend $700 million to both train the workers necessary and construct a huge graving dock on the Harbor to build the floating pontoons necessary to construct the Highway 520 floating bridge across Lake Washington.

► In today's (Longview) Daily News -- Department of Fish and Wildlife to cut 76 jobs -- But the pain won’t be as severe in Southwest Washington because many programs here get federal funds.

► In today's Oregonian -- House Democrats propose higher taxes for corporations, wealthy -- The tax increases, which could raise half a billion dollars or more, emerged as the centerpiece of the House Democrats' plan to deal with an expected 2-year budget shortfall of up to $4 billion. (Washington's budget shortfall was $9 billion. Democrats here passed an all-cuts budget.)

School layoffs:

► Today from AP -- Gregoire addresses teachers union at WEA convention -- “Everyone has felt the pain. It is devastating,” says Gregoire. WEA President Mary Lindquist notes that the relationship between the governor and the WEA has been “challenged at times,” and reminds Gregoire that the union is a powerful political force: “We recognize the only path to resolving the chronic underfunding of education requires us to continue to work together.”

► In today's Bellingham Herald -- Bellingham schools lay off 64 people -- State law requires school districts to notify certificated staff, which generally includes teachers, counselors, administrators and psychologists, by today (Friday, May 15).

► In today's Columbian -- Layoff notices sent to 77 Battle Ground teachers -- The school district will serve layoff notice to nearly one in 10 of its 780-plus certificated teachers.

► In today's Yakima H-R -- School districts wrestle with cuts -- Toppenish will lay off nine of 232 teachers and lose up to five others through attrition. East Valley will have 17 fewer certified staff. Yakima, the Valley's largest school district, will not lay anybody off, yet.

Local news:

► At SeattlePI.com -- Hague: All King County employees should pay for health care -- The King County Councilwoman introduces a proposal that would require all county employees to pay a monthly health care premium. Council Chairman Dow Constantine has proposed having high-salaried, non-union county workers help pay for health care benefits.

► In today's Everett Herald -- Snohomish County timber sales suffer -- Schools, hospitals and libraries all benefit from timber sales on state land. And like just about everything else in this faltering economy, those sales have sunk to near-record lows.

► In the Olympian -- New DSHS chief is inheriting Colville debacle -- Susan Dreyfus has a real mess to unsnarl in the Colville office when she joins the governor’s Cabinet on May 18.

National news:

► In today's NY Times -- Internal feud at UNITE HERE escalating (brief) -- John Wilhelm, president of the union’s hospitality division, announces that the general executive board had suspended the union’s general president, Bruce Raynor. Wilhelm said Raynor had helped various locals secede and form a new union, Workers United, which has merged into the SEIU.

► In today's Investor's Business Daily -- Obama aids labor with policy shifts, appointments -- After decades of decline, labor now has reason to be optimistic about the future: It has fast friends in the White House. California officials learned just what that meant when they tried to trim the pay of state health workers. SEIU got the administration to tell California to back down.

► At LaborNet.org -- Lawsuit derails SEIU surveillance effort -- A security company has sued SEIU for failing to pay all of its $2.2 million in bills for surveillance and security services related to its trusteeship of SEIU-UHW. One of the firm's top executives working directly with SEIU on the trusteeship is a former executive of the Steele Foundation, a strike-breaking company hired by Sutter Health to break a 60-day strike by hundreds of SEIU-UHW members in 2005.

► In today's Tri-City Herald -- Senate bill would address guest worker program -- AgJobs legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, has been re-introduced in the U.S. Senate to address Washington state’s need for agricultural guest workers.

► In today's NY Times -- Mexican data say migration to U.S. has plummeted -- Mexican and American researchers say that the current decline is largely a result of Mexicans’ deciding to delay illegal crossings because of the lack of jobs in the ailing American economy.

► In today's Seattle Times -- Stockholders should demand a say on executive pay (editorial) -- Shareholders of Dow Chemical have created a right for themselves to vote every year on executive pay and benefits. The company's board of directors, which is supposed to represent them, advised them not to do it -- and they did it anyway. Good for them.

► In today's Washington Post -- Trade wars brewing in economic malaise -- Ordered by Congress to "buy American" when spending money from the $787 billion stimulus package, the town of Peru, Ind., stunned its Canadian supplier by rejecting sewage pumps made outside of Toronto. After a Navy official spotted Canadian pipe fittings in a construction project at Camp Pendleton, Calif., they were hauled out of the ground and replaced with American versions.

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2009
Public plan option at issue in health care reform

The following article by David Groves was written for the Retiree Advocate newsletter of the Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans:

As you read this, serious negotiations are happening in Congress regarding comprehensive national health care reform.

Finally. After decades of debate, at last there is consensus in 2009 that inaction is no longer an option.

The crisis of skyrocketing health costs and growing ranks of uninsured Americans is a major drag on the entire U.S. economy and is driving jobs overseas. It is bankrupting hard-working families and obliterating our retirement security. It is dragging down all levels of government and causing other critical public services to be cut or grossly underfunded. And it is a moral outrage that all this is happening in the richest nation on this planet.

Under the leadership of President Barack Obama, there appears to be consensus to tackle this crisis -- even among the medical and insurance industries that reflexively opposed past efforts to reform our health care system. And the clock is ticking. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vows to take floor action on the sweeping yet-to-be-unveiled proposal by the end of July.

All sides in these ongoing negotiations claim they want to reduce costs, expand access, maintain choice and improve the quality of our health care. But as always, they differ on how to accomplish these goals.

The most explosive issue -- one that could derail this aggressive timetable -- is whether to create a public government-run health plan that would compete with private health plans. Every American would have the option of purchasing coverage through this plan, which would not need to generate profits to please Wall Street shareholders and would almost certainly have lower administrative costs.

But most importantly, a public plan would introduce some long-overdue price competition to the private insurance market. These private plans have collectively done a horrible job at seeking efficiencies to restrain premium increases. They have done a terrific job of simply passing on rising medical costs to plan participants.

The Commonwealth Fund, a respected private health policy research foundation, says that the introduction of a new public plan would reduce costs for everyone, including those who choose to keep private insurance. They predict that a typical American family could save nearly $1,000 a year in reduced premiums alone.

The creation of a new public plan is supported by progressive health reformers and most Democrats as a necessary component of covering the uninsured, expanding choice in health providers, and ensuring affordability.

Who opposes a public plan?

First of all, there are still a few ideological holdouts on the extreme right-wing who oppose any “government interference” in the private health care industry. They warn against the dangers of “socialized medicine” – ignoring that we already have it.

The growing costs of uninsured patients’ routine care in emergency rooms and their postponed treatment of preventable ailments are being “socialized” into the private insurance system. Those costs are being passed on to people who do have health coverage and are a principal reason why premiums are skyrocketing.

Those who support health care reform but oppose the option of a public plan are generally Republicans and private insurers. They suggest that “government-run health care” would be wasteful, inefficient and of poor quality. But at the same time, they argue that a government-run plan could prove so popular that it would put private insurers out of business.

Opponents of a public plan sidestep the fact that removing profits from the equation will lower costs. Instead they complain that a public plan would have an unfair competitive advantage because it would be subsidized by taxpayers and wouldn’t be subject to the same rules and restrictions as private insurers.

Congressional negotiators are moving to allay those concerns. One compromise recently proposed would ensure that a public insurance option must finance itself through premiums -- and not taxpayer subsidies -- and must follow all the same laws private insurers follow.

For information about the AFL-CIO's position on health care reform, click here.